LBRY Brings You the Fight of the Century

Samuel Bryan • Aug 10 2016

LBRY is the junction where creativity and economics meet. It’s a place to share, but also a carefully designed marketplace to reward creators for their efforts. Learn more about the economics of LBRY here. That’s why we are so pleased to have a featured video, Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Rap Battle.

Fight of the Century depicts a musical debate between economic heavyweights Friedrich Hayek and John Maynard Keynes. The film brilliantly contrasts Keynes’ penchant for government interventionism with Hayek’s free market approach. It’s a rap battle pitting central planning against spontaneous order.

Now, this may sound like a real snoozer, but if you’re one of the millions of people who have watched the film, you know it’s anything but.

John Papola and Russ Roberts released the video in 2010. It does the seemingly impossible: make economic principles fun and entertaining. The characterizations are as sharp as they are hilarious. Keynes comes off as the publicly adored playboy and Hayek as the oft-snubbed underdog.

And it really is a rap battle!

Papola and Roberts brought some serious street-cred to the project and struck the perfect balance between nerdy and funny. Papola worked as a creative director at SpikeTV and learned Austrian economics listening to podcasts on his commute. Roberts is an economist affiliated with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University.

Papola’s aptly named company Emergent Order signed on as a featured content provider before our beta launch on July 4. The production company creates everything from feature films to virtual reality experiences. They call themselves “geeks with a heart.”

EO’s latest project is their first feature-length film: At The Fork – “a film about husbandry and wife”. It stars Papola himself and his wife, Lisa Versaci, who “offer up a timely, entertaining, and unbiased look at how farm animals are raised for food.” EO has partnered with some big names to produce it – Whole Foods Market and The Humane Society of the United States. It was released last month, and it’s already getting great reviews – 8.3 stars on IMDB and 100% critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.

With your help, LBRY may one day add At The Fork to its featured content, as well as EO’s other amazing works.

If you’ve received a LBRY beta invite, you can do yourself and us a favor by heading to lbry://keynesvhayek and watching Fight of the Century: Keynes vs. Hayek Rap Battle right now!

We think you’ll enjoy it, and your views will help prove to intrepid creators like EO that LBRY is the future of content distribution.